If you're a home owner, you don't have to pay stamp duty just because you change your address. If you let your old address to tenants and rent your new address, there's no change of ownership, hence no stamp duty, no conveyancing fees and no agent's commission.

And if the interest and other outgoings on your old address exceed the rent, you can start claiming negative gearing. (I'm not condoning the related tax rules -- just stating a fact.)

Will you start paying land tax and rental management fees? Probably, but that's all tax-deductible too -- unlike the costs of selling and buying your principal residence. Could you become liable for capital gains tax? Only if you make a capital gain! Stamp duty, conveyancing fees and agents' commissions offer no such safeguard.

Of course, if enough people use this trick, governments will change the rules. If the existing duty is replaced by land tax, revenue will not depend on turnover. If the existing duty is replaced by a vendor duty on the capital gain, owners who sell and buy less often will pay their duty in less frequent but larger instalments. In the mean time, those who avoid unnecessary transfers of title can save a fortune.

When the GST was introduced , stamp duty was to be cut , it has never happened as it is a state government tax , if we really want the economy to fire up forget the mineral boom, make to a lot easier and less expensive to build a family home particularly in Regional Australia. The Federal Government needs to ;encourage" the states to make this happen , no stamp duty on land sales if you are going to owner occupy and the GST from the construction of that house goes back to the state government, where the house is being built . Will this happen no its too simple.